Polemidas's Arc

Chapter 14 of 7

Polemidas rode home through the castle gates at dusk. The saved farmers were safe. The court would call it another victory. But he did not feel like a man who had won. He kept seeing the raiders he had killed. The captain falling into the pit. The men who broke on his spear so the child could reach the trees. He had told himself he was more than a weapon. Yet his hands had done what they always did. He did not go to the great hall. He walked the ivy-covered walls to the quiet garden behind the towers. A small stone pond sat there, its water still and clear. He knelt beside it and looked down. A killer looked back. Blood he could not see was still on him. He had saved lives today. He could think only of the ones he had ended. A robin landed on the pond's rim. Its red breast flashed. It drank, unafraid of him, then lifted into the darkening sky. Polemidas watched it go and felt nothing lift with it. Footsteps came behind him. He knew them without turning. Heliodorus sat down on the cold stone at his side, golden robes pooling on the ground. "You came home," the prince said softly. "But you did not come inside." "I killed men today," Polemidas said. "More than I can count. I fell back into it, like I always do." He pressed his hands flat against his knees. "I saved farmers. A child. But all I see is the blood. I need you to tell me I'm not that man anymore." Heliodorus was quiet a long moment. He did not smile the easy smile. He reached out and turned one of Polemidas's scarred hands palm up between them. "I will not lie to you, even to ease you," Heliodorus said. "You killed today. That is true, and it will always weigh. I cannot take that away and call you clean." His thumb traced an old scar. "But look at what these hands chose. A weapon does not weep for the men it breaks. A weapon feels nothing at all. You carry them because you are not only a weapon. The weight is proof." Polemidas looked at his hand in the prince's. "So the pain never leaves." "No," Heliodorus said. "It stays because you are a man, not a blade. That is not your punishment. It is who you are." Something loosened in Polemidas's chest. He had asked to be told he was clean. Instead he heard something truer. He would carry the dead. He would carry the saved too. Both were his. He closed his hand around the prince's. "Then I will stop asking to be forgiven," he said. "I will only try to choose well." They rose together and walked inside, toward the carved oak bed where warmth waited. For the first time, Polemidas did not fear the man he saw in still water. He knew part of the answer now. Not clean. Not only a killer. A man who feels the weight, and chooses anyway.